


i can taste it; my heart's breakin

by faikitty



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, in which Fai does his best NOT to spiral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faikitty/pseuds/faikitty
Summary: Fai has no home to return to now that their journey has ended. Kurogane does.





	i can taste it; my heart's breakin

**Author's Note:**

> Set right before the final chapter of the original manga.
> 
> Written for Kurofai Week Day 2: Soul Searching. Just written... a few days later. Expect one more Kurofai Week prompt fulfilled, that I'll likely upload tomorrow or Tuesday.
> 
> Title from "Cry Baby" by The Neighbourhood (which is a very good Kurofai song).

Fai is lost.

Physically, he knows exactly where he is; he’s sitting on the flat roof of one of the buildings surrounding the palace, legs dangling off the edge over a sheer drop as he gazes out across this landscape that is so distinctly different from the one where he grew up. There’s a glass of wine in his hand, a bottle a foot away that was given to him after dinner by that oracle—Yukito—with a small smile and a polite comment that Fai looked concerned about something and may benefit from some time outside of the palace to gather his thoughts.

Yukito was right, too; Fai’s mind is racing as he takes a sip of wine and looks out at the clouds gathered on the horizon, inky blackness covering the stars of the already darkened sky. The storm is still a distance away, but the air feels static and taut with the promise of rain and thunder. The full moon casts light on him from directly above, keeping him company in his stillness, so he is still easily able to see all around him despite the storm that is approaching in the cool night air of the desert.

It doesn’t matter that he can see. Fai isn’t looking, not at anything in particular, just in the general direction of the swirling rainclouds. His thoughts are swirling too much for him to focus, too much for him to even pin down one specific thing to ponder, each one slipping from his grasp just as he tries to catch it.

He’s worried. He’s _always_ worried about _something_ , and he seems to have more things than ever to worry about lately. Really, though, he should be relaxing now, celebrating their victory over the man who changed the course of all of their lives for the worse, letting them come together to fix it for the better, but he can’t seem to get past some aching fear that something will happen again and ruin it all. Even if nothing happens, he can’t help but worry about Syaoran and Sakura, who are together now but can’t stay that way. Syaoran has to keep traveling the worlds and searching for Sakura’s memories. Sakura has to stay here, in the Kingdom of Clow, without the most important person in her life.

Fai wonders what Kurogane is going to do.

For Fai, it’s simple. He doesn’t have a home to go back to. Fai—the real one, his brother—is gone forever. He has no chance of saving his twin anymore, and if Fei Wang Reed has taught him anything, it’s that returning someone from death doesn’t _work_. He has no chance of helping Ashura now either; the man is gone, dead, killed by Kurogane, which wasn’t the way it supposed to go but ended up working anyway. Even _Celes_ is gone, imploded around Fai’s magic and narrowly avoiding taking Fai with it. If Kurogane hadn’t sacrificed his arm…

Fai doesn’t have to think about that, because Kurogane _did_ sacrifice his arm, sacrificed all of him a million times over just to save Fai’s life, again and again and again. But now they aren’t tied together.

Kurogane can leave. He can go _home_.

Fai shivers. The night is growing steadily colder, and he isn’t certain how long he’s been sitting here alone. The bottle of wine is still mostly full but his glass is nearing empty so he refills it and takes a drink. Kurogane is sleeping again, he suspects with a small, fond smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s been that way since they’ve arrived at the palace. Kurogane was injured worse than him, so despite Kurogane’s frustration the ninja has had to spend most of his time sleeping. Fai will miss him when he’s gone; he already does, really.

Fai is startled out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps. Still on edge from their recent fights, his stomach drops and he whirls around, fingers up to cast a spell if he needs to. It’s Kurogane he sees, limping over to him, and Fai is so happy to see him that he doesn’t scold Kurogane for being out of bed so soon, even when Kurogane sits next to him with a pained grunt.

“It’s going to storm,” Kurogane comments once he’s settled in. Fai gazes at him a moment before taking a small drink and casting his eyes back to the horizon.

“It is.” As if to prove his point, lightning arches down from the black clouds, lighting up miles upon miles of sandy dunes for a beat. The thunder that follows booms and echoes and sends a thrill down Fai’s spine. “I haven’t seen many storms— _none_ like this. Celes was mostly too cold for them. They’re pretty.”

Kurogane eyes the glass in Fai’s hand and the half-empty wine bottle next to him. “So you came up here to get drunk and watch the storm?” he asks, grabbing the bottle and closing his lips around it to take a gulp while Fai tries—and fails—not to find that sexy. Kurogane grimaces and pushes it firmly away from him, the wine too sweet for his taste.

“Not _drunk_. Just drinking. And I came up here to think. The storm was just a pleasant bonus. As are you.” Fai gives Kurogane a lazy, pleased grin. “You came to find me even though you’re still hurt. I’m touched, Kuro-rin.”

Kurogane scoffs at Fai’s flirting, same as he always does, but there’s familiarity in the sound that makes him feel warm even in the cold. “I wasn’t sure where you’d run off to,” Kurogane says gruffly. “You’re not fully healed yet either. You probably shouldn’t be up here alone.”

“You were worried about me, hm?” Fai teases. Kurogane offers the slightest tilt of his head, just the barest acknowledgment, but it’s enough confirmation to make Fai’s heart flutter embarrassingly. “I’m not going to suddenly keel over, but I welcome the company. It’ll get me out of my head.” Fai takes another sip of wine and offers it to Kurogane. He shakes his head adamantly, looking slightly nauseated at the thought, so Fai shrugs, taking another sip.

“What were you thinking about that was so important you couldn’t do it in the palace?” Kurogane asks.

“Mm… A lot of things.” Fai gazes out at the storm. The lightning illuminates more of the landscape as it grows steadily closer, thunder echoing in Fai’s ears a few seconds later. “Our journey. My brother. Ashura. Syaoran and Sakura…” Fai sighs. “I worry about them. They went through a lot, far more than anyone should have to go through, let alone someone so young. I want them to be okay.”

“They will be,” Kurogane says, so firmly and with so much faith that Fai almost believes him. “They’re strong.”

“Strength doesn’t erase hurt,” Fai murmurs. “That’s what I wish I could take away from them.” He leans back, tilting his head to gaze up at the stars in the sky above him, the space still free from clouds for the time being. “…I’m going to stay with them. With Syaoran, at least. He has to keep moving and searching, and I want to help.” Fai laughs, the sound soft but harsher than he intended. “I don’t have anywhere else to go anyway.”

Fai feels Kurogane’s eyes on him, so he leans back forward to give him a smile. “I’m not being negative,” he clarifies, sensing the concern behind Kurogane’s frown. “It’s just a fact. Besides, I _want_ to keep journeying with him. I’d do anything for those kids.”

Well, them and Kurogane, who has dragged his eyes away from Fai to watch the storm instead, knee ticked up and arm resting atop it. Kurogane, who Fai is staring at, because he doesn’t want to look away, wants to look at him forever, a thought that sends a spike of terror into his chest because he never meant to get this close to Kurogane to begin with but he _did_ , and now he has to memorize every inch of his skin, every scar and every curve on his face, because he doesn’t know when will be his last time seeing him at all.

Kurogane, who could—and likely _will_ —leave forever any day now.

“So,” Fai says with as much nonchalance as he can muster as his heartbeat threatens to betray him, “what are _you_ going to do after this?” The lightning illuminates reveals the flush of wine in his cheeks and the hope and dread he narrowly managed to keep out of his voice.

Kurogane isn’t looking at him. He waits for the thunder to roll through before answering. “I was thinking about going home to Nihon.”

Fai’s heart sinks where it pounds against his ribs, its rapid beating slowing to a painful crawl. The wind picks up around them as he tries to force acceptance out of disappointment. “Oh!” The word comes fast after Kurogane speaks, and Fai’s smile tastes fake and familiar on his lips. “Of course! You must miss it. Everyone you love is there.” Kurogane glances sideways at Fai. He looks like he wants to say something else, so Fai keeps talking. “I would probably want to go home to Celes if I could—if I had a family there.”

Fai grips his glass tighter. His fingers are shaking, and he tells himself it’s from the wine while knowing it’s not. He stares down at the red sloshing around in it, and suddenly drinking it seems less appealing. “It’s a good thing Syaoran returned my magic, huh? Otherwise we’d be stuck together.” He means for it to be grateful, but it comes out rueful.

Kurogane’s eyes are burning Fai’s skin, but he doesn’t look up again, just stares into his glass, even when the lightning flashes and the thunder cracks and Kurogane starts, “hey—”

“I’m happy for you!” Fai interrupts, surprising himself with how honest the words are. “You can finally go home! I’m glad. I really, really am.”

He is, too, which is the most painful realization of all. He’s upset, which is ridiculous because he _knew_ this was what he would hear. His hope left a bitter aftertaste on his tongue, but he’s still _happy_ , even though he’s _upset_. Kurogane can go _home_ , he can be _happy_ , and Fai is _glad_ that Kurogane can finally be at home again in Nihon. He wonders distantly if it would be easier to just be angry or sad or even _betrayed_ at this aching feeling, almost like a sense of abandonment, but he can’t seem to make himself feel anything but paradoxical happiness for Kurogane.

Kurogane’s eyes are dark when Fai finally drags his eyes back up to his face, something close to hurt in them, except that’s impossible because Kurogane doesn’t _get_ hurt, and besides, Kurogane is going _home_. Fai can’t tell if Kurogane has seen through the smile that feels glued to Fai’s face or if it’s something else entirely, but there’s a heavy rock in his chest that feels close to shattering as he swallows it down out of his throat.

Kurogane turns away and the stone grows heavier, and when he shifts as if to leave, Fai has the awful, panicky sensation that this will be their last conversation, maybe _ever_. Adrenaline floods his veins so quickly it makes him dizzy. Before he can stop himself, he’s reached out and grabbed Kurogane’s sleeve to keep him from moving, glass forgotten and knocked over to spill wine across the ground. Fai tugs him back, hands going to his shirt instead to pull Kurogane down into him, pressing his lips against Kurogane’s in a kiss that’s desperate, fast, starved. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, why he’s doing _this_ , but he knows words just seem to make things worse so maybe kissing will help instead. Kurogane isn’t kissing back, but at least he’s not leaning away, so that’s something, right? Fai feels like he can’t breathe and wonders vaguely if the wind could be sucking air from his lungs, and finally he has no choice but to pull away himself with a gasp. He drops his head, hair covering his eyes, and his fingers stay tangled in Kurogane’s clothes.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Fai murmurs, throat cut raw by the words.

“I wasn’t going to,” Kurogane says, confused, gently unfurling Fai’s fingers from his clothes. “My foot fell asleep. I was just moving to wake it back up.”

“No, I mean— I don’t—” Fai breaks off with a frustrated hiss, thoughts stuck behind his teeth even though he’s no longer smiling. “I don’t want you to go back to _Nihon_.”

 _There_. He’s said it, and he can’t take it back, doesn’t really want to anyway, so he presses on. “It’s pointless for me to lie and let you leave, let you go so I don’t make a fool of myself or cause a fight when the outcome would be the same either way and you would still be _gone_. I _know_ it’s selfish of me. I know you want to go home. That’s all you’ve _ever_ wanted. But that’s not what _I_ want. I’m not ready to lose you, not yet. I can’t force you not to leave, but-” Fai’s breath comes shaky but the words come steady as he drags his head up to look Kurogane in the eye- “I want you to stay.”

Kurogane gazes at him silently for a moment. Lightning throws his features into starker lines than the moonlight. His face is unreadable. Unreadable, unreadable, _always_ unreadable, unless he’s angry, which Fai thinks might be part of why he likes teasing Kurogane so much. It gives him an expression Fai can understand, something he recognizes, and Fai wants that expression now because anger at his selfishness would be better than these seconds of not knowing what Kurogane is _thinking_. The silence, the whir of thoughts in Fai’s own head, these questions and fears and regrets all thrown into the storm, are so deafening in the silence left by his words and Kurogane’s closed mouth that Fai almost misses it when Kurogane _does_ speak on the heels of thunder.

“Are you done?”

Fai was expecting Kurogane to get mad at him. At the very least, he was expecting Kurogane to get up and shake him off and walk away, never to be seen again. He wasn’t expecting outright _dismissal._ “Yes.”

“Okay.” Kurogane leans forward, and Fai thinks for half a second that he’s going to kiss him, but instead he takes Fai’s face in both of his hands, clapping them together on his cheeks so firmly it stings. “You’re a dumbass, and I’m not leaving.”

 _What_.

“What?”

“I’m not leaving,” Kurogane repeats, drawing his hands back so he can rap Fai on the head as Fai touches his stinging cheeks. “I said I _was_ thinking about it. I’ve had little chance to do anything else since I’ve been forced to rest for so damn long. I thought about it, and I decided not to.” At Fai’s stunned silence, he adds, more gently, “I’m staying, idiot.”

“But you— I—” Fai stumbles over the words. The rock in his chest is gone, the hole left by it gradually filling with confused relief and rising irritation. “Why didn’t you just _say_ that?”

“I was going to.” Kurogane looks almost amused, visible even as the clouds have begun to overtake the moonlight, and Fai is starting to understand why Kurogane smacks him when he’s being annoying. “You interrupted me.”

“You had stopped talking!”

“I was _thinking_. Unlike _some_ people, I don’t say every word that comes to my head.”

Defensiveness starts to creep into Fai’s voice, spurred on more by embarrassment than anything else. “You could have _stopped_ me.”

“I tried. You kept going. I… kind of thought you meant it for a minute there.” Kurogane shakes his head as if shaking off remnants of the hurt Fai saw in him earlier. “Besides, I know you. You’d never have said half that stuff if you already knew I wasn’t leaving.”

Fai flushes, turning away with a huff and crossing his arms. “That’s called tricking someone, Kuro-rin,” he complains loudly. “Now I’m too angry to be glad you’re staying.”

Kurogane snorts. “That so?”

 _No_. Fai does kind of _want_ to be mad at Kurogane for making the past two minutes feel like an eternity of grief, grief over something he apparently no longer needs to _mourn_. He wants to be mad, to yell at Kurogane for tricking him, even if Kurogane denies that that’s what he was doing. But he can’t. “You are the _worst_ ,” Fai announces, even though he suspects the effect is ruined by the smile that has managed to sneak its way onto his face. He turns back toward Kurogane slightly. “…what about Princess Tomoyo? She won’t be expecting you?”

“I already told her,” Kurogane says. “Besides, if I showed up without you, I think she’d just kick me out again and tell me to come back when you were with me.” A nearly imperceptible shudder passes through him.

Fai finds himself oddly touched by that, pleased that Tomoyo likes him enough to want to have him back in her world. “You can just admit that I’m the reason you’re staying,” Kuro-tan,” Fai teases, elbowing Kurogane in the side.

Kurogane rolls his eyes but nods slightly, causing Fai’s face to heat up despite the wind. “You played a role,” he says honestly, looking back out to the storm, much closer now.

It’s getting cold. The wind is increasing in strength, tugging Fai’s hair free of its band. There’s a smudge of heavily pouring rain not far from them now, and the lightning that streaks across the sky lights up the rolling dunes and jagged, partially excavated ruins, bricks seeing rain for what may be the first time in hundreds of years for some.

It lights up Kurogane’s face too. Fai catches only the edges of it in sharp clarity before its thrown back into a dim blur, but it’s long enough to highlight the quirk of Kurogane’s lips, turned up in a half-smile, and the brilliance of his narrow eyes, for once not half-buried beneath furrowed brows. It occurs to Fai that even as he etches this memory into his brain he doesn’t _need_ to, because Kurogane will be there tomorrow and the day after that to remind him of it.

Fai shivers as the thunder booms, as much a reaction to the full weight of the realization that Kurogane is _staying_ as it is to the cold and noise. Kurogane notices him, though, and wordlessly tugs him in against him, arms going around him to keep him warm. Fai lets Kurogane hold him gladly; Kurogane feels _safe_ , would feel safe even if this were a tempest instead of a storm. Fai relaxes against him, arms fitting over Kurogane’s like they were made to go there.

Kurogane takes a breath against him, deeper than usual, as lightning breaks through the night, before he speaks. “When I do go home,” he says, so low Fai can barely hear him over the wind, “what would you say to going with me?”

Thunder saves Fai from answering. It keeps Kurogane from hearing the automatic “yes” that escapes Fai’s lips before he even fully registers what Kurogane has just asked him. Fai steadies himself as it rumbles idly away. He almost wants to say no. He almost wants to see if it would be possible to get Kurogane to admit that he _wants_ Fai to go back with him. He wants to hear Kurogane say it, that he would be sad to leave Fai behind. Kurogane isn’t holding him any more tightly than he was before. He doesn’t seem even remotely concerned about Fai’s response, acting instead as if it were an idle thought that happened to wander across his mind at just that moment. But there’s the faintest uptick in his pulse where his wrist lies across Fai’s skin, the slightest added stiffness in his spine that speaks volumes.

It’s enough for Fai.

“I’d say yes,” Fai murmurs, uncertain if Kurogane will even hear him over the wind. He takes Kurogane’s hand and squeezes it, and he knows Kurogane heard him by the touch of a smile to the back of his head. It was a stupid question, really; Fai would follow Kurogane to the ends of all the worlds without being asked.

(He likes being asked, though.)

Fai shivers again in spite of Kurogane being braced around him. The wind has started to work itself up into a frenzy, and as Fai looks up at the sky above him a drop of rain lands on his nose, followed by another and another. Kurogane is the first to make it to his feet, and even though it’s grown too dark to see him properly, Fai can hear the smile in his voice as he extends a hand to help Fai up. “Come on,” he says. Fai accepts the hand and lets Kurogane lead him back to the palace, back to light and comfort, where it feels like home.

He may not have Celes. He may have no home to return to. But Kurogane’s hand is broad and warm around his as he pulls Fai back to their lives, reassuring and a steady constant in the night and the storm.

Maybe, Fai thinks, he’s found a home in Kurogane.


End file.
